My Econ 490 Blog

On a hot day on I-294, it is the middle of rush hour heading into O'Hare International Airport. I was driving my friend to the airport and I was about a mile and a half from the O'Hare exit. Being in the right lane, it was bumper to bumper traffic. I could have easily just driven on the shoulder for a mile and half and gotten off the highway. At the time I had been sitting in traffic for two hours, if I had acted opportunistically, I would have driven on the shoulder. There are couple of reasons I did not act this way, first being if there was a police officer on the road I would have gotten a ticket. This is probably the biggest deterrent from violating the rules of the road. Another reason , I did not use the shoulder to drive is because if there was a accident or broken down car on the shoulder I would not be able to pass them. Also, If someone needed to use the shoulder I would have been blocking that. So the reasons were both ethical and consequential, I did not want a t...

My experience with organizations lie with my membership with my fraternity. The fraternity has a hierarchical structure both within out chapter in the University as well as on the national level. At the top of the school level is the alumni board of directors who own the chapter house and whom the officers of the fraternity report to. Below the alumni board is the executive committee which includes the president, treasurer and other executive members. These people are in charge of the members of the chapter. This is the hierarchy that is present in the University. However, both the executive committee and the alumni board both report to the national organization of the chapter. The national chapter personnel are in charge of the charter of the chapter. The charter is what makes a fraternity a Greek organization, it is basically a sponsorship. While this type of organization is fairly common, but the organization is dependent on every member taking part and doing their job. The  c...

Kenneth Joseph Arrow Arrow was born on 23 August 1921, in  New York City .  Growing up during the Great Depression, he embraced socialism in his youth. He would later move away from socialism, but his views retained a left-leaning philosophy.  He earned a Bachelor's degree from the City College of New York in 1940 in mathematics . He attended Columbia University , for his graduate studies. While there, he studied under Harold Hotelling, and was greatly influenced by him.  He received a Master's degree in 1941.  He served as a weather officer in the United States Army Air Forces from 1942–1946 . I was not familiar  with Ken Arrow until he was assigned as my alias, but after learning about him, Arrow has some great theorems and was a world renowned  economist. He is best known for his impossibility theorem. H e theorized that it was impossible to formulate a social preference ordering.  In short, the theorem states that no rank-order e...